


little charmer

by theformerone



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-01
Updated: 2018-04-01
Packaged: 2019-04-16 02:09:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14154384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theformerone/pseuds/theformerone
Summary: There is no sand in Kusagakure. At least, there isn't supposed to be.





	little charmer

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [gaakaku](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/367584) by fungusamongus. 



> title lifted from Little Charmer by The Technicolors

Shikaku is standing in the middle of buttfuck Kusagakure, separated from his team, and low enough on chakra that he should've passed out about three meters back if not for the sheer force of will that kept him on his feet.

Splitting up had been their best bet. Inoichi was injured and badly. Chouza could carry him for longer than Shikaku could, and Shikaku could think enough steps ahead to draw the Iwa shinobi tailing their squad away from Chouza and Inoichi. He could buy them enough time to get back into Fire Country.

That had been weeks ago. Before his capture and before the camp. Busting out had been almost absurdly easy. They hadn’t known he was a Nara. They hadn’t known their shadows would betray them when Shikaku was shrouded in darkness.

Now he would just be by himself, with the dusk shadows curving around him. They were his only company and they were plenty. The shadows spoke in hisses and whispers, alerting Shikaku about the field mouse that was a field mouse and the one that was a shinobi disguising himself.

The shadows give him three seconds to prepare to protect himself before the first volley of shuriken claw at his legs and the backs of his arms. He can’t stop running, can’t use his clan techniques to slow these fuckers down, because if he misses even one of them, he’ll be a sitting duck. He needs to run.

He’s only got ten shuriken on his person, five kunai, and about thirty meters of ninja wire, all pilfered from the bodies of those he had taken down. There are roughly sixty things he can think of to do with them, but he doesn’t have the time to lay an intricate trap. He can’t turn around an engage. The shadows tell him there are three on his tail.

Shikaku wants a stiff drink, a cigarette, and a nap. As it is, he has two fresh scars on his face, several missing fingernails, and a mostly mangled left hand. And three Iwa shinobi gunning for him.

He hasn’t had anything to eat or drink in weeks, and it shows in his sluggish movements. But beyond the grasses of Kusa, the Konoha border is a beacon that drags him home.

He stumbles, the kunai that lodges itself in his back yanking him backwards. He grits his teeth, pulling forward to use he tension between his body and his attacker’s to draw the knife out of his back. It doesn’t work.

Three more launch themselves into him. The false information he gave them in his initial interrogations must have been good. The war had been dragging on for years. Some random prisoner breaking out of camp wouldn’t fully warrant a three man retrieval.

Shikaku regrets being as good a liar as he is. The kunai and their wires drag him to his knees, and he looks up. He hopes the name that his parents give him when he is buried will be a nice one.

Above his head, impossibly, is a wave of golden light. Soft and quiet as sunlight curving across the sky in the middle light of dusk.

It comes down behind him, severing the wire on the knives in his back and Shikaku falls limp like a puppet with cut strings. He breathes in once, then pushes himself up onto one knee, trying to lever his way up to standing.

“Rest.”

Ahead of him is a red haired man, clad in white. His eyes are a pale blue-green like desert spring water, lined with kohl, and his hair is a shock of red blood. There is kanji tattooed into his forehead.

He reaches out with one hand, oddly smooth, and it cups Shikaku’s cheek. The man looks unhappy.

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs. His voice is dry and low, but his touch is gentle. “I had hoped to find you sooner.”

The gold coalesces into a shape: a tanuki. It’s about the size of a bear, standing on its back feet. Its tail lashes lazily about. Shikaku can hear death sounds from beyond the wall of gold that shields him from it.

“Gaara,” the tanuki rasps. “We’re gonna have more company if you don’t pick up your stray and keep it moving.”

“He’s hurt, Shukaku.”

“He’s human, it comes with the territory.”

Gaara rubs his thumb over the new scars on Shikamaru’s cheek thoughtfully.

“Help me, Shukaku.”

The tanuki huffs, clearly annoyed, but it rests its tail on Gaara’s shoulder. An odd heat funnels through his fingers into Shikaku’s cheek. There’s a tingling in his face, like a muscle falling asleep and waking up and falling asleep again. Then, Gaara smiles.

“There,” he says, low voice sweet and whisper-like.

Shikaku is pretty sure he’s been visited by a desert spirit and his familiar. He isn't sure of what else to make of the disc of sand that slides beneath their feet, and lifts them up into the sky. The tanuki, Shukaku, huffs, following them into the air with whirls of white smoke curling around his heels. 

Gaara crouches down, sitting next to Shikaku. There must be some kind of poison cycling through his system, left there by the kunai that had pierced him. That's the only way to explain this fever dream, the way all logic flies from his mind in favor of folk tales and legends. 

Gaara has no hitai-ate, and tanuki are not summoned creatures. There is nowhere for the sand that he has brought to Kusagakure to come from. The only explanation Shikaku can muster up from that is some kind of nature transformation, one that allows him to pressurize the earth beneath his feet until it's shaped into a form he can manipulate.

Even that doesn't explain his water eyes or the tattoo on his forehead. Or how he can manipulate them through the air without using hand signs, or even looking where he's going. 

Gaara sits tidily on his knees and carefully guides Shikaku down until he's on his back, his head pillowed in the soft white cloth that shrouds Gaara. His hands are slim, calloused and yet soft where they rest on either side of Shikaku's face, gently rubbing at where his new scars have recently disappeared. 

"Rest," Gaara says, brushing back the loose black hair out of Shikaku's eyes. "You'll be back in Fire Country before sunrise. I will see you there."

"My bastard brother and his kit will take him off our hands when we cross the border," the tanuki shouts. "Don't get distracted by a pretty pair of eyes, brat. We have work to do at home. You know Karura is waiting."

"Shukaku." 

The tanuki grumbles, huffing without much heat. Gaara rubs a tender finger over Shikaku's earlobes, where his black studs had been ripped out during his stint in the Iwa camp.

"Don't mind him," Gaara says kindly. "Shukaku has had a bad temper for as long as I've known him."

Shikaku nods, a little dazed.

"He seems like a decent guy."

That startles a half chuckle out of Gaara, and the sight of his lips moving over his teeth into a smile is enough to stun Shikaku into silence. Perhaps he is a spirit of some kind, a minor god of desert mercy; deliverance despite difficult odds.

"Sleep," Gaara repeats, slowly carding his fingers through Shikaku's hair. "You will need your strength when you wake." 

Shikaku should probably stay awake. But considering he's spent nearly a month in a POW camp in Iwa, falling asleep with a spirit and his familiar in the middle of Kusa doesn't phase him as much as it should. By all rights, he should be panicking, should be trying to get off the flying disc of sand, tuck and roll, and run on his own away from them. But they are headed south, towards the Grass-Fire border. 

He had already been tortured and had given up nothing. Gaara had healed him, had rescued him. It was a clever tactic; make Shikaku trust him and then tear out whatever information he had on Konoha's forces. He was a jounin, he was likely to have it. 

But Gaara's fingers scratching just so against Shikaku's scalp tell him to sleep. Through half lidded eyes, Shikaku watches Gaara look out towards the horizon. He is a vision in white, his own desert browned skin in stark, lovely contrast with his red hair and black rimmed eyes. Perhaps they really will take him home. That would be a pleasant surprise after years of war. Kindness. 

He sighs, the shadows below him murmuring nothing. Against instinct and following exhaustion, Shikaku shuts his eyes and sleeps, Gaara's aloe and rain smell trailing him into his dreams. 

**Author's Note:**

> this fic was inadvertently inspired by tumblr user fungusamongus' astonishing art that wasn't even shikaku/gaara related, but seeing the two pieces right next to each other set my stupid shipper brain a-flapping and so. here we are. 
> 
> check out their other art! fungusamongus has some truly incredible shikamaru/gaara art and comics that also make my fingers itch to write fic for them. 
> 
> thank you for reading!!


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